Finch could feel his mood deteriorating from its already low state. The atmosphere in the room was oppressively dismal. ‘So, Thomas. Something is on your mind.’
Thomas laughed, a dry rattle that turned to a cough and reverberated across the room. ‘Always one to dispense with the niceties, Denny. I appreciate that. Yes, there is something on my mind.’ He hesitated, and Finch drummed his fingers against the worn fabric on the arm of the chair. ‘What would you say if I told you I had a painting I wanted you to see?’
‘An artist you’re interested in?’
‘The artist I’ve always been most interested in, of course. It’s one of mine.’
Finch was certain he’d misheard. ‘I’ve seen everything you’ve done, Thomas. You know I’m one of your most ardent admirers, but you haven’t picked up a brush in twenty years. You told me so yourself.’
‘Twenty years. Time passes so slowly and then suddenly it doesn’t. At which point one becomes aware of how much of it’s been squandered. Twenty years. Yes, that’s true.’ He walked back to the chair and stood behind it, as if for protection. ‘What if this wasn’t something new?’
Finch felt his tongue thicken as his mouth went dry. ‘But all of your work is cataloged in my books. And in the catalogue raisonné. Every one of your paintings, Thomas, examined in minute detail.’
‘Perhaps not every one.’ Thomas emptied his glass and drew an unsteady hand across his chin. ‘I know what a perfectionist you are. How thorough in your work and research. I had my reasons for holding back. And now, well, I wanted you to see it first. I owe you that, don’t I?’
His voice took on a hypnotic note, and Finch’s head began to swim. Another Bayber. It simply wasn’t possible. Anger flashed warm in his veins and he dug his nails into the flesh of his palms, recalling the years he’d spent working on the catalogue raisonné. The hours away from Claire and Lydia, locked up in his cramped study, his neck angled stiffly over one photograph or another, deciphering the meaning in a brushstroke, assigning reason to a choice of color. The envy he barely tamped down at the recognition that this prodigious amount of talent had all been dumped into the hands, into the mind, into the soul of just one person. One insulated, selfish person. And now, another Bayber? This withholding seemed untenable, especially in light of the years they had known each other; the presumed friendship; the insinuation of trust, of favored status. The rent Finch paid out of his own pocket, the small monthly allowances sent to Thomas to keep him fed, although it was far more likely the money was keeping him well-lubricated. An omission such as this made his position all too clear.
Thomas cleared his throat. ‘There’s something else, Denny. The reason I’ve called you here, obviously.’
‘Obviously?’
‘I want you to arrange to sell it for me.’
‘Me? Forgive me, Thomas, if I find this insulting.’ Finch stood up and paced the circumference of the room, marking a path free from furniture. ‘Why me? You could just as easily call Stark, or any one of a hundred dealers for that matter.’
‘I have my reasons. I don’t want this sold through a dealer or through a gallery. Besides, my arrangements with Stark ended a long time ago.’ Thomas walked over to Finch, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘I want this to go straight to auction. You still have connections, Denny. You can arrange that for me, can’t you? It needs to be done quickly.’
Finch’s head was on fire. The pain that had started in his back spread across his body. He could torch the entire room simply by laying a finger to it.
‘You could have asked me to do this years ago.’ Finch could feel steam rising off his skin. ‘Look at you. Look at the way you live. This isn’t just a quirk or some strange artistic temperament. You live in squalor. And I’ve paid for a good deal of it. Why now?’
‘You’re angry. Of course you are. I should have expected that. I know things haven’t been easy for you lately.’ Thomas drew himself up and took his hand away from Finch’s shoulder. He walked across the room to one of the large floor-to-ceiling windows hidden behind heavy drapes and pushed the curtain aside with his finger. ‘Would it be so strange I would want back what I once had, just as you do?’
‘You’re the one who stopped painting. You let your reputation slide away, you didn’t lose it. Kindly don’t patronize me. And don’t make assumptions about my life.’
‘I don’t expect you to understand.’
The words stung his ears with their familiarity, and a wretched knife turned in his gut. I don’t expect you to understand. So this was what Claire had felt. This was how he’d hurt her.
Thomas studied his fingers, then turned from the window. ‘In truth, Denny, I was thinking of you. It will be worth so much more now than it would have been when I painted it. I’ll be able to pay you back tenfold, don’t you see?’ He emptied his glass and walked to the credenza again, pouring himself another. He raised the glass in Finch’s direction. ‘Just imagine the publicity.’
Unfortunately, Finch could imagine it quite easily. That shameful desire he was unable to submerge, the longing that persisted on the fringe of his consciousness, the unspoken wish for a speck of what Thomas had frittered away: the money, the swagger, and the talent; his ability to transport those who saw his work to a place they hadn’t known existed. Finch had almost convinced himself the books were purely for scholarship. Other than insubstantial royalties, there was no personal gain. He was not the artist after all. He was an art history professor and a critic. He could pretend to understand what he saw, to divine the artist’s meaning, but his was the paltry contribution. A frayed dream rose up and swirled in his head. The first to see another Bayber, to discover it, after twenty years. His disappointment in finding himself tempted was as palpable as his wife’s voice in his head, their conversations continuing, unabated, since her death. Enough is enough, Denny. He pushed Claire away, shutting out those same melodic tones he struggled to summon each day, letting her be silenced by his racing thoughts. His pulse quickened. He rubbed his hands together, feeling a chill.
‘Let’s see it.’
The sly smile. As if he was so easily read, so quickly persuaded.
‘Not just yet, Denny.’
‘What do you mean? I can’t very well talk about something I haven’t seen.’
‘Oh, I imagine if you put the word out, there will be the appropriate level of required interest, sight unseen. And I don’t have the painting here, of course.’
Thomas’s body may have been in some state of disrepair, but his ego was as healthy as ever. ‘Until I see it,’ Finch said, ‘I’m not making any calls.’
Thomas appeared not to have heard him. ‘I was thinking you might ask Jameson’s son to take a look at it. Pass judgment on its authenticity. He’s at Murchison, isn’t he? And struggling a bit since Dylan died, from what I hear.’
‘Stephen? Stephen Jameson? Surely you’re joking.’
‘Why?’
Was it Finch’s imagination or did Thomas seem insulted his suggestion was met with so little enthusiasm? ‘The young man has a brilliant mind—frighteningly so, really.
